Only Lonesome You Remains
by hopelessromantic549
Summary: Even though every part of her that breathes wants to love him, she can't. So she lets him go instead. And she discovers that cutting someone who has somehow become a part of her out of her life is much the same as dying anyways. D/E post 2x19.


**A/N: These two just can't let go of each other. Completely disregards 2x20.**

**Title from "Straitjacket Feeling" by The All-American Rejects. Thanks as always to Mountain-Woman. Thanks for reading, enjoy, and please don't favorite without reviewing.**

_If it is born in flames  
><em>_Then we should let it burn  
><em>_Burn as brightly as we can  
><em>_And if it's gonna end  
><em>_Then let it end in flames  
><em>_Let it burn all the way down  
><em>_- "Currents" by Dashboard Confessional_

There's something about Mystic Falls in spring that is intoxicating. The flowers have just barely begun to blossom, the stars twinkle when the moon shines high above, and the air swims with vibrancy and vitality. The very earth is rich with the history of a town that is more than a century old, and darkness falls late, late, late.

It is on one of these blissful spring days that Elena Gilbert ends her own life.

She doesn't mean to, of course. She promised the loves of her life that she would fight until she couldn't fight anymore, and she doesn't break promises. Even if they both leave her, she will keep that promise for the rest of eternity. But this…she discovers that cutting someone who has somehow become a part of her out of her life is much the same as dying anyways.

She goes to him because she has to. And still, when he walks away, she is sure her breath will leave her for the last time. She cannot live without him. She doesn't know why she's even trying.

(Because he'll never be happy if he stays.)

He looks happy to see her when she finds him in the Boarding House, but also wary, like he knows what she's thinking. This can't possibly be true – he's never been a mind reader, despite his many other significant gifts – but she sighs nevertheless. (He has always turned her inside out.)

"Elena," he singsongs as he saunters towards her, drawing out the triple syllables of her name like he has for more than a year now. The sound makes her sad, inexplicably.

"Damon." His name leaves her mouth grudgingly, like her body is aware that this may be the last time the five letters will roll off her tongue. Like her lips have become accustomed to speaking his name, and they're rebelling against the inevitable absence.

Like she's already missing him.

His expression automatically shifts at the sorrow in her voice. He flashes over to her with vampire speed, predictably enough, catching her as something gives deep inside her. Her eyelids flutter, but it's more out of grim anticipation than anything else. A sick, sordid part of her is glad to be rid of this man's crazy grip on her, but the more rational, more real part of her is only waiting for the hole that he will carve by leaving her.

And she doesn't doubt that he will leave her. Not when she says what she has to say.

He props her up with gentle hands. "Can you stand?"

She blinks, memories flashing before her eyes like they say happens just before you die. She sees Atlanta, the relief she felt when he leaned down beside her wrecked car and saved her for neither the first nor the last time in their tangled, twisted, symbiotic relationship. She sees her bedroom, the snap of her brother's neck, the surrender of her to his brother. She sees royal blue dresses and _Gone With The Wind_ and her feet in his lap and his hands on her face and "I will always choose you." She sees the light in his eyes and the curve of his lips, and she wants to cry.

But she pulls herself together. It would be selfish of her to cry right now. And she's been selfish enough already. (That's why she's here, after all.)

So she shoves him away unkindly, prompting some sort of ridiculous confusion spewing from his mouth, and she stands up on her own, shaking, but not from dizziness. "Yes," she says shortly, tugging at the hem of her long-sleeved shirt like that can make a difference.

Like anything can make a difference.

"Yes, I can stand." (_Yes, I can live without you, yes, you'll be better off without me, yes, I'm sure._)

He blinks at her. She thinks maybe he's finally caught on to her devastation, finally realized that something's wrong. She wants to say something insipid, something cheeky like, "Took you long enough." But her mouth isn't quite working.

"Well, what are you doing here?" He asks slowly, and it's the first sign that this won't end well. He hasn't asked her that question – hasn't seriously needed to know the answer to that question – in so long.

She averts her eyes. Despite her best efforts, the lissome lines of his body still make her swoon, and she needs to concentrate. Her throat feels constricted, clogged, like she swallowed something she wasn't supposed to (like she let him get inside her heart when he wasn't supposed to).

"I'm here to tell you goodbye," she finally says thickly, unable to look at him or even move. She intended for her voice to leave no room for argument, but instead she sounds frail and weak, like she's hoping he'll contradict her.

(And maybe she is.)

And indeed, he just snickers, that same taunting, delicious chuckle that has always unclenched the darkness that fisted her heart when her parents died. He crosses his arms, but it's the most natural gesture she knows, the gesture she would recognize from a mile away, more than his smirk or those cold, translucent eyes.

"You're here to tell me goodbye?" He repeats, and he's mocking her, mocking her because he doesn't believe her, she can tell.

And why should he believe her? She has no power over him when her life is danger. She can try and control him all she wants, but leaving her will never be an option for him. (Saving her is all he lives for, anyways.)

Her head feels heavy (or maybe it's her heart and she just can't admit it). She nods haltingly, the movement dislodging the lump in her throat, unleashing the multitudes of things she's trying to forget as she stands here with him.

"Yes," she says quietly, feeling more diminutive than she's ever felt with him. "I'm here to tell you goodbye."

She wishes she could say these things with more force, more resolve. But she's shaking; she's shivering. He's not even doing anything, and he's making her shake. What the hell is wrong with her?

His eyes widen. "Goodbye?" He repeats yet again, and she wishes he didn't already sound so sad, because she doesn't think she can do this.

So she nods quickly, decisively, putting off the break as long as she possibly can.

He just shakes his head, the wry humor, the sarcasm she hears in her sleep sometimes, expunged from his voice. "What the hell are you talking about?" He asks frantically, panic forcing its way into his entirely too beautiful features, clouding his eyes. He looks so harried that she aches in places that only he ever touches. "You're not leaving." A beat of silence, raw, pulsating silence, passes. "Are you?"

She doesn't answer. (She _can't_ answer.)

She steels herself for this last difficult choice, this last betrayal. She never wanted to do this, but then, isn't this what love is all about? Putting someone's happiness above her own?

And see, the idea of letting him go would be seriously fucked up (considering she _does_ love him, more than he will ever know), if not for the fact that she'll never love him enough. He can't live with half her heart. Stefan can, and that's always been the difference. Besides, she would never subject her true love to such a fate. So she's letting him go, because he deserves so much more than she can possibly give him.

Even though this _hurts_.

"No, I'm not leaving," she says softly, staring at her hands, clasped neatly by her stomach, as if to protect herself against the torrent of emotions he never fails to unleash.

Relief passes over his face.

She grimaces, already throbbing at the prospect of purposefully inflicting pain on him.

"You are."

It comes out like a plaintive cry, the words that break her once and for all, break her like the prospect of dying at the hands of Klaus never has.

His lips fall apart easily, like they were waiting for such a crucial miscalculation, such an irrevocable mistake. He looks like a deer caught in headlights, if the deer had skin as white as snow and eyes as blue as the sky at twilight. He looks utterly floored, and she can't take it.

"What do you mean?" He asks slowly, gradually edging closer to her, his hands hovering in the air like he doesn't know what to do with them. "We have to fight Klaus. I'm not going anywhere."

He sounds so sure of this, so certain that she somehow does not mean what she is saying, that the fault line in her chest ripples. She holds her head high anyways, because if there's one thing he's taught her, it's that she's a lot stronger than she ever gives herself credit for.

"Yes, of course, stay until we fight Klaus," she says flippantly, even if the tremble in her voice must give her away. "But after Klaus, you're leaving."

He takes a screeching step backwards, so shocked by this indirect order that he doesn't even bother to catch himself. A hint of pain flashes across his face, and she flinches. Even now, even when he is standing right in front of her, she feels so disconnected from him. And that, somehow, is indescribably painful.

"But," he begins, rubbing the back of his neck, a movement so blindingly familiar that she has to close her eyes. "_Why_?"

(But he doesn't want the answer.)

The words are on her lips; she feels them, she needs to say them. But she can't. She won't let herself make this harder (on both of them) than it has to be.

But she feels like she'll burst with the weight of them, with the weight of what they could be, if only she were brave enough.

And the words spring into her head, heedless of her every effort to push them away:

_Because I love you, and it's not enough. Because I still love your brother, and you deserve more – better – than that. Because you'll never be happy if you stay. Because none of this is fair. Because you're everything to me, and I need you to be happy._

But she can't say any of that, so she just narrows her eyes coldly and twists the knife once more.

"Because there's nothing left for you here."

His jaw clenches. His eyes say what he clearly won't: _You're here_.

Instead, he spits out incredulously, "And there's something for me somewhere else? God, Elena, what the hell are you _doing_?"

She hesitates, just slightly. She doesn't know what the hell she's doing. The problem is, she _never_ knows what she's doing when it comes to him. He frustrates her, excites her, confounds her, sets her soul on fire, makes her want to cry, brightens her, scares her, makes her feel alive. It's all too much.

And even all of that, the mess of emotions he puts her through daily – that's not why he needs to leave.

He needs to leave because they'll never work out, even if she can be brave for him like he deserves her to be. They'll just consume each other, their twin flames scorching until there's nothing left of their love. They are too stubborn, too fierce, too difficult to reason with. It would be a fool's errand to try with him, and she hasn't been a fool in a very long time.

(She grew up too fast for that.)

So she stares him down with as much ice as she can muster (even though he's usually the one providing the coldness in their relationship). She sets her jaw and she imagines a time when she could have loved him.

"You're only here because you think I'll change my mind and love you. And I won't."

(The lies are suffocating her.)

He actually flinches, his eyes wide with horror, and she feels dirty, cruel, like one of those people who cause pain just for the fun of it. And she's not entirely convinced that that's not exactly who she is.

"Why won't you just be honest with yourself?" He asks, the question ripping its way out of him like he didn't even really mean to ask it. His head wags back and forth, and now he's begging, pleading, on his knees in every way possible, like she never thought she'd see him. "Why won't you be honest with _me_? Why is that so hard for you?"

These aren't the questions she expected. She didn't think he'd see through her so easily, that he'd decipher the true root of her intentions. She didn't think he'd realize she's always felt something for him, all along.

But then again, it doesn't matter. This changes nothing. She'll just have to work harder to convince him to abandon her.

So she heaves an inward sigh and counters steadily, "I _am_ being honest with myself. I love Stefan. It's always going to be him. Only him."

He shakes his head staunchly. This particular denial isn't as mindless, not nearly as clueless and desperate and somehow sad, as it was all those months ago in her bedroom (especially considering back then she _meant_ it when she said it would always be Stefan) but he obviously doesn't believe her. She thinks she's going to fall apart.

And she's desperate. Doesn't he get it? She _can't _love him, can't be with him. She's not brave enough, or strong enough, or selfless enough. She can't do it. Even though every part of her that _breathes_ wants to love him, she can't. And that won't change.

Part of the reason she refuses to become a vampire is so she doesn't have to live an eternity of wishing she were better for him. She wants to die because she'll never, ever be enough for him. And that _hurts_.

She clenches her fists so hard, the parts of her that love him like this (hard and angry and irreversible) quake.

"Leave," she commands, the word biting, harsh.

Final.

He narrows his eyes in tandem with her. "No," he demands, stalking towards her like he must stalk towards his prey (the sight is undeniably alluring, and she hates herself). "You don't get to do this. You don't get to –"

"_Leave_."

He stops suddenly, dumbfounded by the severity in her voice. His eyes are full of the emotion she never wanted to put there: pain. He bows his head, his body caving in on itself.

"I have nowhere to go," he says quietly, the words almost inaudible. He looks so brittle, so _vulnerable_, that she has to turn away to hide the moisture creeping into her eyes. She honestly can't decide if this is cruel, or if she's making the right decision for him (never mind her; who cares if she's happy).

She shrugs, laughing humorlessly. She doesn't mean to, really, but the sound comes barreling out of her. The noise is thin in her ears, reedy, like the fake laugh she perfected just after her parents died. She hates subjecting him to it, considering how many times he's been the instigator of the fullest laughs that have ever graced her body.

But she can't tell him the truth. She _can't_ be honest with him.

"I'm sure you'll find somewhere," she assures him, aware how callous she sounds but unable to make it stop.

He stares at her in disbelief. She waits for disgust to flood his voice, but he is only sad, sad and regretful, like he believes he did something to make her so cruel.

_Oh, if only you knew._

"I have nowhere," he repeats.

(And she has nothing to say.)

They are quiet for the longest moment she can remember with him. Her entire body aches for him, aches like it only does when she huddles by her window at night and prays for him, prays for the boy he once was.

Prays that one day, she can make him happy.

But that fantasy is long gone. She can't make him happy. She doesn't know why she ever thought a happily-ever-after with him was possible, really.

And finally, finally, his eyes flame, bright with the force of his anger and despair. This is what she has been waiting for: the bite of his self-destruction. She _needs_ him to hate her, to curse the day he fell for her. The only way he will ever truly relinquish her is if he discards her completely. After all, if he hates her, then surely he cannot love her?

Somehow, in her single-minded pain, she cannot recognize that for him, hating her will always be the same as loving her.

"If I leave, all I'm going to do is take off my ring and let myself die," he points out, validly enough, his gaze intent and almost pure in its agony. "Do you understand that? Do you _care_?"

She automatically softens. She may not be able to love him, but it would _kill_ her if he no longer walked this earth, if he no longer attacked random girls in dark alleyways and made his brother's life hell from halfway across the world (she's so far gone that him as the cold-blooded killer she used to know is unimaginably preferable to him gone).

"Of course I care," she whispers, completely incapable of meeting his gaze.

He closes the minute distance between them like it's not killing him, leaning his forehead to hers, the touch so sacred that she breathes him in. His fingers find her temples, and they thread in her hair, so affectionate that she feels it all the way to her toes.

"Then why are you doing this?" He asks, the words unexpectedly gentle.

She shakes her head, her skin moving against his like her lips should be moving against his. "Because –"

"No," he interrupts her, his hands suddenly gripping her face tightly, holding her in place, forcing her to look at him, trace every line of his incomparable beauty. "Don't give me all your stupid reasons. Tell me honestly: why are you _doing_ this?"

She jumps away, unable to be this close to him. She can't do it, she can't do it, she can't do it…

She leans against the wall, looks at the ground, studies her Converses, wonders how everything got so fucked up since Stefan breezed into town and changed everything, as cliché as that sounds. Her eyes are tired; _she_ is tired. He always tires her.

And now, she lets him go.

"Because," she breathes, and the sound is weighed down by her certainty that it doesn't really matter what she says (he'll leave anyways, and isn't that what she wants?), "It's not enough."

Confusion, that same emotion she routinely feels around him, floods that precious, precious blue. He takes an invasive step towards her again, closing the gap like she never jumped away at all (like she never chose his brother at all).

"_What's_ not enough?" He pushes, like he doesn't know exactly what she's talking about.

She feels so fragile. There is no way to answer this that won't make him fight for her. If she tells him that what she feels for him can't ever be enough, he won't leave, because he'll believe it can be enough one day. If he believes even for a moment that he can change her mind, that he has a chance, that over an eternity things might change, he'll never leave. And she knows what he never will:

She'll never be brave enough to leave Stefan.

(She hates herself for it, but it's the truth.)

So she just raises her head defiantly. She stares at him, memorizing this moment, the bewilderment in that phantom blue, the certainty that if she had met him first, she would have loved him with everything she had and then some.

"This thing between us," she clarifies firmly, the words cool and unrelenting, despite the hammering in her chest. "It won't ever be enough."

His lips pull downward. "You're a coward," he accuses hotly, although there's still so much pain emanating from him that she wants to hold him.

She shrugs instead, fighting every instinct she has about him, valiantly pretending that that accurate assessment doesn't cut deep into her very soul. "Then I'm a coward."

But he slams the wall behind her, making her jump. "Damn it, Elena!" He bellows, his eyes alive and soaring, making it ever so clear that he's clinging to a fragile shred of hope here. "You don't get to do this. You don't get to decide our future like I have no say in it. I have a say in it, Elena! And I say I'm not ready to give up on us. Why are you?"

She just blinks at him, utterly helpless. Because she doesn't know why she's giving up. She doesn't know why she's so sure she can't ever make this work.

She just doesn't know.

And suddenly, without warning, as if her body was only waiting for the visceral movement of his fist against the hard wall, she starts crying, hot and fierce and broken.

He blinks, but she doesn't even notice.

"Please just let me go," she pleads, clutching his shirt desperately, simultaneously imploring him to leave and begging him to stay. "Because I can't let you go, and we can't fix this. Don't you get it? Us three, we can't be happy. It's just not _possible_."

He slaps her hands away like her touch burns, ignoring the effort she put forth to say all that, the emotion bleeding into her voice like black ink onto white paper (like his soul into hers). His eyes bore into hers.

"How would you know?" He snaps, fury streaming from his words, encasing her like the unmistakable symmetry of fire and ice, puncturing her like the wooden stake she could never thrust into his heart. "You've never tried."

She recoils from him like he's physically struck her. She feels numb. She can't breathe.

"You're right," she muses sadly. "I've never tried."

He stares at her, dumbfounded. He waits, but she can't find her voice; she has nothing to say. She's never tried to make it work between the three of them because she's not brave enough. And she has no excuse for that.

(No explanation, either, although that's not what he wants.)

"I won't come back," he warns her suddenly. He means it to be dangerous and predatory, she knows, but he can't quite keep the severe hunger out of his voice, the way he wants to pull her close and demand she keep him. He quivers, shakes, his eyebrows going haywire as he does his best to keep himself together. "If I leave, I won't come back."

"I know," she whispers before he can say anything else (before he can change her mind). There's a barely perceptible note of agony in her voice, but she's sure he'll hear it. (He always hears her.)

She feels the need to repeat it, to make it real. "I know."

(And god, does she _know_.)

His eyes are so sad that she loses her footing, crashing forward and into him like she thinks maybe she was always meant to. He holds her slightly away from himself, wary of the moment, of how fleeting this thing between them is.

"Then you were right," he murmurs after a moment, the words dead, emotionless. He strokes her cheek like it's the first time (like it's the last time), his eyes moist. He doesn't say anything more, hoisting her lightly back up. She blinks up at him, lost in the shadows making a home on his face.

She cocks her head, the pain of letting him go etched in the tilt of her neck. "I was right?" She echoes, this moment feeling so very far away.

He nods imperceptibly. "This is goodbye."

She doesn't have time to say it back.

Because he strides away, his shoulders tense, the pain almost visibly rippling through the body she wishes she could feel against hers just _one more time_. He doesn't look back.

All she can think is that he will never know how much she loves him.

And then, there is only silence. Silence, and a sound that she thinks could only be the breaking of her own heart.

_fin_

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